The western Amazon, home to the most biodiverse and intact
rainforest left on Earth, may soon be covered with oil rigs and
pipelines.

According to a new study, over 180 oil and gas
"blocks" â€“ areas zoned for exploration and development â€“ now cover the
megadiverse western Amazon, which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru, and western Brazil. These oil and gas blocks stretch over 688,000
km2 (170 million acres), a vast area, nearly the size of Texas. The
study appears in the August 13 edition of the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

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For
over three years, researchers from two U.S. non-profit organizations â€“
Save America's Forests and Land Is Life â€“ and scientists from Duke
University tracked hydrocarbon activities across the region and
generated a comprehensive map of oil and gas activities across the
western Amazon. The result is an alarming assessment of the threats to
the biodiversity and indigenous peoples of the region.

"We
found that the oil and gas blocks overlap perfectly with the most
biodiverse part of the Amazon for birds, mammals, and amphibians," said
study co-author Dr. Clinton Jenkins of Duke University. "The threat to
amphibians is of particular concern because they are already the most
threatened group of vertebrates worldwide."

The study also
found that the oil and gas blocks are concentrated in the most intact
part of the Amazon. Even national parks are not immune; exploration and
development blocks cover the renowned YasunÃ­ National Park in Ecuador
and Madidi National Park in Bolivia.

"The most dynamic situation is unfolding in the Peruvian Amazon," warned lead author Dr. Matt Finer of Save America's Forests.

The
study reports that 64 oil and gas blocks cover approximately 72% of the
vast Peruvian Amazon (~490,000 km2 or ~121 million acres), an area much
larger than California. All but eight of these blocks have appeared
since 2003, when Peru launched a major effort to boost exploration
across the Amazon. National parks are off limits to hydrocarbon
activities in Peru, but oil and gas blocks do overlap a variety of
other types of protected areas.

Many of the oil and gas
blocks in the western Amazon overlap titled lands of indigenous peoples
and encroach on the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary
isolation. These isolated peoples have chosen to live in the forests
without contact with the outside world. They are extremely susceptible
to outside illnesses due to lack of natural resistance.

In
the second part of the study, the researchers delve into the most
cutting policy issues related to oil and gas activities in the Amazon.

The
authors highlighted new access roads as the greatest single threat from
hydrocarbon development. Roads trigger deforestation, colonization,
overhunting, and illegal logging in previously remote areas.

"The
elimination of new oil access roads could significantly reduce the
impacts of most projects," said Finer, echoing one of the studies' main
conclusions.

The analysis points out that the current
environmental assessment process is inadequate due to a lack of
independence in the review process and a lack of comprehensive analyses
of the long-term, cumulative, and synergistic impacts of multiple oil
and gas projects across the wider region. The authors stress the need
for regional Strategic Environmental Assessments in order to correct
this situation.

The study also addresses the complex policy issues related to indigenous peoples.

"The
way that oil development is being pursued in the Western Amazon is a
gross violation of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the region"
said Brian Keane of Land is Life, "International agreements and
Inter-American human rights law recognize that indigenous peoples have
rights to their lands, and explicitly prohibit the granting of
concessions to exploit natural resources in their territories without
their free, prior and informed consent."

The authors also
detail the growing conflict of hydrocarbon activities slated for the
territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

Finally,
the study highlights the role of the international community. Growing
global energy demand is driving the search for more oil and gas in the
Amazon and companies from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and China are
carrying out most of the development.

"Filling up with a
tank of gas could soon have devastating consequences to rainforests,
their peoples, and their species" remarked co-author Dr. Stuart Pimm of
Duke University.

Ecuador's innovative YasunÃ­-ITT Initiative
is held up as a potentially precedent-setting example of how the global
north and south can collaborate on both protecting the Amazon and
combating climate change. The initiative is the Government of Ecuador's
limited-time offer to keep its largest untapped oilfields unexploited
in exchange for financial compensation from the international community.